Welcome to the 2018 Fund Elite Awards

The health of the fund industry is a true test of the overall health of the financial markets, and despite strong challenges over the past 12 months the sector has been growing steadily.

Therefore, we have created the 2016 Fund Elite Awards to showcase the talent, dedication and experience of those behind some of the greatest funds in the market, which have overcome many obstacles to achieve strong returns for investors despite the market struggles.

More information on the winners can be found in the November issue of Investor Review Magazine.

Addressing the Challenge

Ones to Watch in European Investment

Equinoxe Alternative Investment Services is an independent service provider to the alternative investment space. Established in 2007 in Bermuda, it provides a range of services to multiple client types and strategies, including fund administration, as well as middle and back office services to hedge fund and private equity vehicles. Equinoxe also offers a unique front to back co-sourcing product based on the latest capital markets technology platform in collaboration with our partner Calypso Technology.

Since the company’s foundation, Equinoxe has opened seven offices globally: Ireland (Dublin and Sligo), Bermuda, Atlanta, Mauritius, Singapore and Malta, in direct response to the stated requests of clients for Equinoxe to make their first-class services more available as a local support in many of the international locations where they conduct business.

The core of Equinoxe’s business is focused on Fund Administration for the hedge fund and private equity industries, as Alan McKenna describes in detail. “We have significant depth of experience and capabilities in these spaces where we invested heavily in our technology and people to create as much straight through processing as is available in the market today. “At Equinoxe, we are very aware of the need for, and are thereby resolved to provide, an increasingly higher level of value-added services to our clients.

As such, we have our Equinoxe Calypso product which we offer out in a cloud based infrastructure, providing all of our clients with the ability to leverage a Tier One technology platform for everything from order management, portfolio management and risk, compliance to middle office settlement and P&L generation, all provided in an integrated, transparent environment.”

Equinoxe’s client base is wide and diverse, with a broad range of structures and strategies covered. In fact, as Alan observes, the one thing that all of these clients have in common is a requirement for a high-touch service offering, with experienced staff on hand that can provide added value. “Most of our clients originate from recommendations by other clients, with the majority transitioning from other fund administrators, due to a range of issues causing dissatisfaction that Equinoxe can easily rectify.

Alan takes the opportunity to stress the key to the success of the business is in the people that perform the work – according to him, they are the business. “Every employee of Equinoxe has bought into the customer centric culture that we established at the outset when we first set up the business.” Equinoxe’s major selling points boil down to three fundamental elements; its people, its technology and its service model. “We have continually invested in both our people and technology,” Alan comments, “to make sure that we have the most experienced team and market leading technology in the industry. We then combine these with a laser focus on the client to make sure our clients receive the highest service possible.”

With all three elements working in harmony to their highest possible level, Alan is more able to create a leading company that he is expressively proud to be a part of. “Like everyone else in the industry,” he reflects, “we are acutely aware of the challenges facing hedge funds in general. There has been a raft of regulations brought in which is making it much more difficult for our clients to operate. When combined with the downwards fee pressure our clients face, they need their service provider to maximise the value we need to add more value.

“We also need to be innovative and supportive and, above all, we must provide a quality product in order for managers to concentrate on delivering performance for the end investor. This is the point at which one has perfect alignment and goal congruency amongst all participants in the market.
So the challenges for Equinoxe are to innovate, move forward and evolve to be the valuable business partner our clients really need.”